A new champion will be crowned on Monday night when top-seeded Indiana meets 10th-seeded Miami in the College Football Playoff National Championship, which kicks off at 7:30 p.m. ET from Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
This marks just the third all-time meeting between the two programs, with the Hoosiers winning their first matchup in 1964 and the Hurricanes evening the score in 1966. Interestingly, all three meetings have taken place in the greater Miami area, though this is their first postseason matchup.
Indiana wore its home uniforms in both of the previous meetings despite the location, but that’s included crimson helmets, crimson jerseys and khaki-colored pants in 1964 and white helmets, crimson jerseys and white pants in 1966. Tonight’s matchup will have them in crimson helmets, crimson jerseys and white pants.
Miami, on the other hand, wore gold helmets, white jerseys and gold pants in the previous meetings, as the Hurricanes didn’t adopt the white helmets we’ve become accustomed on a full-time basis until 1976. They’ll wearing their current road look of all-white uniforms on Monday night, meanwhile.
That said, this marks just the second time this century that a non-Nike/Jordan Brand school will win the title, joining Auburn (Under Armour) in 2010, as both Indiana and Miami are outfitted by adidas. The last adidas school to win a national championship was Tennessee in 1998.
Another notable part of tonight’s game is that Miami will look to become the first program to win a College Football Playoff National Championship in its home stadium, though such a feat can only be accomplished by one other school, UNLV, which shares its home with the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders.
The Hurricanes currently play at Hard Rock Stadium, home of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, but previously won three of their five national championships (1983, 1987 and 1991) at their old home, the Orange Bowl, where they played from 1937-2007. That venue, of course, was named after the postseason bowl game played at that location from 1936-96.
This is the first national championship appearance for Indiana, but Miami has won all five of its national championships in white jerseys, though they wore orange pants in 1983, 1987, 1989 and 1991 and green pants in 2001. They also played against a team that wore (a shade of) red jerseys and white pants (Nebraska in 1983, 1991 and 2001, Oklahoma in 1987 and Alabama in 1989).
Will Indiana join that list? We’ll see…
As for the field design, the College Football Playoff logo, national championship wordmark and location are prominently displayed at the 50-yard line, just as they have been since the four-team playoff was implemented in 2014-15.
There’s also the “2026” logo, which will be worn as a patch on the left shoulder of the Hoosiers and Hurricanes’ uniforms, painted at the 25-yard lines. This logo continues to replace the No. 0 with the stylized football from the playoff logo.
The field is complete with the playoff’s signature black end zones, which feature both team’s wordmarks and the playoff logo in opposing corners. Indiana’s wordmark is predominately crimson with a white outline and Miami’s is orange with a white stroke.
The only season in which the national championship did not include black end zones was the 2019-20 season, when LSU knocked off Clemson at the Caesars Superdome (known then as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome) in New Orleans with grass-colored backgrounds.
Photos courtesy of @CFBPlayoff on X/Twitter.
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